I don’t think they are children any more
A good question
>>Maybe I’m nuts, but how is this possible that we are paying for children of Civil War Veterans?
Maybe they’ve been dead since 1960, but they’re such loyal Democrat voters that the government doesn’t want to drop them off the rolls.
Lets guess that these are 90 year old now... so born in 1932.
Assume their mothers were young (20 year old), but got married to someone with a guaranteed income (ie a government pension).
Assume their fathers were 80 when they were born (1932 minus 80 is 1852 as the fathers birth year).
In the last year of the civil war (1865) they would have been 13 years old. Possible as a drummer or even as a late-war conscript for the south.
Wanna really go nuts?
Former President John Tyler, born in 1790, still has two living grandchildren.
http://ironbrigader.com/2012/02/13/children-civil-war-veterans-alive-147-years-war-ended/
Served young, fathered late.
Albert Woolson, the last Union veteran, died in 1956 at age 106. There were still a good many of these guys extant in the 1920s and 1930s- it is not inconceivable they had children late in life.
Here’s one to wrap your head around- the last veteran of the American Revolution died in 1868...around long enough to have seen the Civil War and known the abovementioned Mr. Woolson....two lifetimes spanning much of the history of this nation.